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All this weekend we’re looking back at the Blue Jays’ lost season. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we play armchair manager and general manager to point out the Top 10 mistakes the Jays made this year. Sure they had a lot of bad luck — injuries and unexpected underperformance — but they didn’t make it any easier on themselves.

Messing with Brett Lawrie at 2B

The Jays rushed Lawrie back from his pre-season oblique injury, this much they admit. They were desperate to shore up the left side of the infield when Jose Reyes sprained his ankle. While on his minor-league rehab assignment, the Jays experimented with playing Lawrie at second base, but bailed on the idea before bringing him back. But after Lawrie returned from his second injury, a high-ankle sprain, and second base remained an obvious weakness for the club, the Jays dabbled again with moving him to the middle of the field. This after just three minor-league rehab games in the position. A week later the Jays had lost six straight, with Lawrie making two errors. So they once again bailed on the experiment and moved Lawrie back to third, where he has since flourished. While Lawrie towed the line at the time, he later admitted he didn’t enjoy being moved across the infield and suggested it affected his scuffling at the plate. Lawrie’s bat may profile more as a second baseman and the Jays were undeniably weak up the middle, but to try it midseason with a young player that has a chance to be a perennial Gold Glove contender at third, where his instincts, range and quick reflexes are best suited? The move had the look of a team hitting the panic button.

Overrating Maicer Izturis and Emilio Bonifacio’s defence

Alex Anthopoulos admitted this week that he and his staff did not give enough consideration to the Rogers Centre’s fast-playing turf. That may explain why they trusted either Maicer Izturis or Emilio Bonifacio to play the position on an everyday basis. One of the two was expected to emerge with the starting job, but both struggled on both sides of the plate, combining for a dozen errors and a meagre .273 on-base percentage. While rookie Ryan Goins is still learning how to hit at the major-league level he has noticeably stabilized the right side of the Jays’ infield with his defence since his arrival.

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The Romero yo-yo

Granted, the Jays’ lack of pitching depth left them in a bind when Josh Johnson went down with his first stint on the disabled list. But Ricky Romero, whose confidence had already taken a beating when he failed to make the club in spring training, was still figuring out the mechanical changes the Jays were making to his delivery and had made just one start at the Class-A level before they called him back. He was nowhere near ready. He made two starts — failing to make more than a single out in the second — before he was quickly shuttled back to the minors. He was a mess when he got there, posting a 13.85 ERA in his first four starts at Triple-A Buffalo. He eventually ditched the new mechanics and had an up-and-down rest of the season in the minors. Where Romero goes from here is unclear, but this year’s premature call-up didn’t do him any favours.

Melky Cabrera playing through pain

After the benign tumour was discovered on Melky Cabrera’s spinal cord, Anthopoulos said he admired his player for playing through pain without complaint. But the reason why the tumour wasn’t discovered earlier is because despite having back pain for the entire season, Cabrera didn’t mention it to trainers until the final month. Of course it’s neither the team’s nor Cabrera’s fault that he got the tumour, but if he had said something about it in April perhaps they would have caught it and removed it then, and he would have returned to the Jays healthy after a month on the disabled list. Instead he played with limited mobility for most of the season and spent the last two months on the DL anyway.

World Baseball Classic

Again, it’s tough to blame the Jays for letting their players play in the quadrennial competition, but it definitely took away from their preparations in spring training. Lawrie got injured, Reyes missed a month of reps with his second baseman and J.P. Arencibia missed time he could have spent getting to know the new pitching staff. Arencibia said this week that Mark Buehrle’s first-month struggles likely had something to do with their inexperience working together.

Lack of preparation at spring training

This is tough to pinpoint, because most teams operate spring training roughly the same, but given how the Jays performed in April, it’s clear they were not ready out of the chute. Part of that probably has to do with the WBC, which should have given them even more cause to put in time for extra reps in the final weeks of camp.

Reviving Chien-Ming Wang

It’s not Wang’s fault; the Jays were desperate, as they were when they handed the ball to Aaron Laffey and Ramon Ortiz. The real mistake was not establishing enough starting depth in the offseason and taking too long before turning to Esmil Rogers and Todd Redmond, who put a stop to the Jays’ carousel of minor-league arms.

Infield shift

The Jays went from saving the most runs in the majors via the infield shift under John Farrell and Brian Butterfield to joining the middle of the pack under John Gibbons and Luis Rivera. By no means is it why they fared so poorly — it probably cost them just a handful of runs over the course of the season — but their lack of attention to it is what’s most surprising, given that it’s use has grown more than 200 per cent over the last two seasons. Rivera seemed to have little clue he was the man in charge of the shift in spring training. Whether or not you believe in the strategy’s effectiveness, the Jays should have been better prepared.

Rushing Sean Nolin

The Jays young left-hander should get a chance at a do-over of his major-league debut next season, because he’ll want to forget his actual debut in 2013. Nolin’s first foray into the big leagues lasted just 1.1 innings, when he allowed six runs on seven hits and a walk. Clearly, he wasn’t ready.

Signing Henry Blanco

Sure, Josh Thole has hit no better, but why waste the time with Blanco? They already had knuckleball-catching insurance in Mike Nickeas and going with Blanco for the first two months of the season meant Dickey had to change catchers midway through the season. Thole caught Dickey’s Cy Young season, why break up the partnership?

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